The invention relates to a visual programming tool for developing software applications.
Historically, the development of software applications required trained and experienced software programmers. Under DOS with its character-based interface, programmers had to design data structures and write program code. This meant that extensive knowledge of the complexities of one or more programming languages was usually required. In recent years, however, with the introduction of windows-based operating systems and the move toward visual based user interfaces, significant progress has been made in developing visual programming tools which have made the task of designing and building applications much easier and more accessible to a wider range of people.
Visual programming focuses on the visual user interface. With visual programming tools, the user is provided with a palette of visual objects that represent commonly required functionality. The user develops an application simply by drawing objects on the screen and by moving those around using drag-and-drop techniques. The visual programming tool takes care of writing or adding the underlying code that is required to implement the functionality of the various objects that have been added to the screen. Thus, the process of writing large segments of code is taken over by the visual programming tool.
Nevertheless, even with prior visual programming tools, users have still had to write and add code to the application under design to complete it. Thus, even though these tools have made the process of designing and building applications much easier, they still have left standing significant barriers to users who are not experienced in programming or writing code.